[Courtesy of Daewoong Pharmaceutical]
Fexuprazan is a class of potassium-competitive acid blockers (P-CABs), which are regarded as a new medicine to replace traditional proton pump inhibitors (PPIs) commonly utilized for the treatment of gastric acid-related diseases and for the prevention of low-dose aspirin or nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug-induced peptic ulcers.
This week, Daewoong signed a contract worth about $50 million, including technical fees, to export Fexuprazan to Mexico. Fexuprazan will be released in the second half of 2022 through moksha8 Pharmaceuticals, which focuses on the commercialization of innovative and established therapeutics in Mexico and Brazil.
For the global sale of Fexuprazan, Daewoong has strengthened its competitiveness with trials to evaluate the safety, tolerability, and pharmacokinetic interactions of the drug when combined with three nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs.
"Fexuprazan is about to enter the U.S. and China as a new best-in-class innovation drug, and we will expand our market all over the world including Latin America and the Middle East in the future," Daweong's Senior Management Director Park Hyun-jin said in a statement.
PPIs are now widely used in Mexico, the second-largest drug market in Latin America after Brazil. Although PPIs have a strong effect of inhibiting gastric acid secretion, they are slow in acting. They also have drug interaction problems and affect mealtime. P-CABs can complement the disadvantages of PPIs.
The first P-CAB was Revaprazan, which has been available in South Korea and India since 2007. Revaprazan showed an early effect on acid suppression, but the effect was not superior to PPIs. In 2015, Vonoprazan became the second P-CAB, which is available in Japan and other Asian countries. Tegoprazan was approved in 2018 and other P-CABs are still in clinical trials.
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